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Dear Lyn,

It is now Sunday 18th Nov (2001). about 10:00 AM as I am starting to write this email.

Sorry about the problem with the international connection on the phone. If you are having
problems getting it reconnected, get Kerri to do it. It should be possible to do it over the
phone.

I received the email from Kerri on Saturday. Half of the country is Moslem, the other half
Christian.

I do not yet know whether they celebrate Christmas, but will try and find out.

Communications in Eritrea are very close to non-existent compared to Australia. On

Saturday when you rang, I was in the process of sending emails to the following people.
You & Kerri , Darren & Kathy, Rob & Eileen, John & Val, Norm & Edna, Roy &
Norma ,The only two which went through were to Rob & Eileen and John & Val. The
problem appeared to be the mail server at Senet in Adelaide. Perhaps Kerri can find out
from them what the problem is.?

Below is the text sent to everyone.

Dear ? & ?.
It is 10.00 AM Saturday morning and we have finally got the lap-top computer going, so
we can now send and receive private emails. Please send any replies to
Lynden@senet.com.au. This is my Adelaide email address which I will access to read
the email.

The factory is only open until 12.00 Noon, so I am quickly sending a note to every one on
the email list this morning just to let them know that I arrived safely and have not yet
been eaten by a cannibal. Over the weekend I will write up a more detailed account of the
trip so far, it has been interesting to say the least.

The expression, “The rat race”, is a totally foreign concept to this country. Nothing, and I
mean NOTHING, moves fast here. Email access rates are no different, so in order to send
these before 12.00 noon I will have to sign off now.

Regards
Dennis

In the meantime I will only try and send emails to you at Kerri’s place, and ask Kerri to
relay the emails on to all the people on the list above when you think it is appropriate.
Please ask everyone not to send emails to my address at Lynden@senet.com.au, as trying
to download multiple messages at this end is extremely slow and difficult. What ever
you, DO NOT send any attachments as these tend to lock up the system. To maximize the
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reliability of the system I only want to send and receive emails between you and myself.
If anyone wants to talk to me, get them to send an email to Kerri, and she can
incorporate it in the body of the text in your replies to me.

Keep trying to send emails to my Adelaide address (Lynden@senet.com.au) as any

emails sent to the Lab can, and probably are, read by anyone. If I cannot access them, I
will send you an email to let you know.

Just make sure that when you REPLY that you delete all of the original message from
me, otherwise it will simply be re-transmitted to me, making it an unnecessarily long
message. I repeat, long emails cause problems here. Initially I am going to send the
emails both through the lap-top and from the Lab. We will find out if you are receiving
both.

In between the last paragraph and the next, we have had a general power failure for 10
minutes, no sooner had the power come back on, then the lap-top locked up and I lost
some of what I had typed. This is pretty typical of life in Eritrea. If you haven’t got
patience before you arrive, you pretty soon have to develop it.

Now to the account of the trip so far.

On arriving in Sydney, I took the shuttle bus to the international terminal and without the
mobile phone would not have been able to find Ray. We were both in the check –in line,
about 20 feet apart, but could not see each other.

The trip to Bangkok, took 8.75 hours. Bangkok airport is huge and not very well lit. The
city is vast, when we took off we were flying over it for about 25 minutes. The lighting in
the city is confined pretty much to the main roads. Impression? what a DUMP. We had a
one & half hour wait, then onto Frankfurt.

The leg to Frankfurt took nearly thirteen hours. The course took us over Israel, so I was
only about ten miles from Jerusalem at one stage. We arrived at 6.30 in the morning. The
temperature was 2 degrees and total cloud cover. We had a six hour wait before leaving
for Cairo and then onto Asmara..

The Frankfurt international airport is huge, it actually has two separate terminals joined
by a light rail system. While waiting I wandered around the place and came across a man
lying on the floor, suitcase upturned, He looked like he was dead. Nobody took any
notice, even children were playing near him. A girl in a uniform, did take his pulse then
called for an ambulance. When they arrived (30 minute later) they managed to revive
him, but it was amazing how nobody seemed to take any notice. It was also strange to see
young girls in uniform walking around with assault rifles.

We left Frankfurt at 1:45 PM Mon. on Lufthansa Airlines. The flight to Cairo was 3 &
half hours, arriving in the dark. Ninety percent of the passengers left the plane at this
point. Nobody appeared to board. Most of the remaining passengers were Eritreans along
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with some UN people and the odd business man. We were not allowed off the plane, and
we were on the ground for one & quarter hours. Cairo is a large city. I had hoped to see
the Pyramids as we came in to land, but was out of luck. We flew over quite a lot of the
land of Egypt, and it was surprising to see lights covering most of the land. The
population must be huge.

The flight from Cairo to Asmara was two and a half hours, arriving at 11:00 PM Mon
12/11/01 local time. We were absolutely knackered after having been on the road for 45
hours.
Now the fun began, but before we begin, you need to know several things about Eritrea.

First the population divides into three classes regarding the English language. The
majority have absolutely no understanding of it at all. A light sprinkling of the people
have some limited understanding, mainly through hand signs, and finally there is the odd
person who can speak English fairly well. You need to understand that the ability to
speak English IS NOT a requirement to hold a job at the airport or indeed even the
Savanna International Hotel..

Secondly the Eritreans are a very friendly and family orientated society. Decisions tend
to be made by consensus within the group. This involves a lot of very loud animated
discussion between the people concerned. They also have a policy of full employment
where possible. This means where we may have one person to do the job, they may have
three or even four people. It also means a lot of people to all get into the group discussion

Thirdly they do not have the same sense of time as Western society. Their opinion is,
maybe we do it now, maybe later.

Fourthly, there is no requirement for a person to be trained in the job before they are let
loose on the public.

You have to get a visa to get into the place. Approvals are usually made in advance, and
the visa is issued when you arrive. To do this you make a mad rush to the Visa office
(small and poky) with a very small lady sitting behind a desk in a very large chair. She is
apparently the head honcho. She is assisted by two other women, one of which doesn’t
appear to speak English and the other one has enough to get by. The head honcho lady
seems to have a semi reasonable grasp. The idea behind the rush is that you want to be
first, otherwise you can be there for more than an hour. We were second in line and after
some confusion, we get our visa’s and it’s on to the luggage collection.

Needless to say, Ray’s luggage arrives, none of mine does. Three other people are in the
same boat. I find out later that Lufthansa lose the luggage of three or four people on
EVERY flight into Asmara (un-bloody-believable). It gets lost at Frankfurt airport
(Lufthansa’s home base). If you are lucky it will only take three or four days to be found
and sent to the Asmara. Some people have to wait up to SEVENTEEN days. I was lucky
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I could get my luggage the following Thursday. That is a story in itself, but I will leave
that until after the events of our arrival.

When you lose luggage, you have to let the airport staff fill in the appropriate form.
Remember, it is now midnight, every one is tired, kids are SCREAMING, Ray can not
find the person who was supposed to pick us up, there are no taxis, one young girl only is
filling out every-ones lost luggage form, she doesn’t know how to do it, she consults
with others, they all argue loudly, the kids continue to SCREAM. What a bloody
nightmare it seemed, little did I know it was going to get worse.

Finally the form is filled out, Ray has found the driver, and we are ready to leave the
airport. It is now 1:00 AM. The poor bastard behind us in the line in the visa office, who
was having trouble because his local company people had not arranged his visa, also had
no transport up to the city, about ten minute drive, so we gave him, a lift.
We arrive at the Nyala Hotel. Ray had stayed there about ten tears ago when the
foundation first went into Eritrea. He said it was pretty awful then but that Isaias, the
local manager, had assured him that it had improved. Some bloody hope!

It’s now 1:00 PM, so I am going to have some lunch now, and will continue the saga
when I return.

Back again, now 3:00 PM. Had a nice bowl of beef & vegateble soup and two small
Asmara beers. Surprisingly, restaurants here are very good., clean, light, bright, tables all
have very nice table cloths, nice cutlery and plates. Plenty of waiters, all very smartly
dressed in uniforms that you would find in a 5 star hotel in Adelaide. Needless to say
very few of them can speak English. All the menus have Tigrini (the local language) at
the top of the page, and English on the bottom half of the page. You simply point to what
you want. I am buggered if I know what you do if can’t speak either Tigrni or English.

If you need to converse at any deeper level than pointing or sign language, and you are
talking to someone who cannot speak English it can be a real problem.

Back to our first night at the Nyala Hotel. From the outside it is 6 or 8 stories high, but
inside only the ground, first and second floors are used. All the fittings from the higher
floors, and indeed even the floor tiles have been scavenged to try and make the first three
floors (almost) usable.

When we arrived the front door had a wedge under it on the inside (to lock it), no bell, so
we had to rattle the door untill someone came to let us in. Inside the place smelt of diesel
oil and had one tiny light to illuminate a large cavernous reception area. The night
managaer booked us in, gave us each a bottle of carbonated water, then took us over to a
poky little lift to take us up to the second floor. I imagined that the lift was going to break
down and really cap off our opening experiences in the country. It did in fact make it up
to the second floor where our rooms were.
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The rooms were straight out of a film about OLD Africa. Tiled red floors, green coloured
walls, two beds connected by a headboard, a bathroom, which believe it or not actually
had a bidet in it. A door which possibly opened out to a balcony, I don’t know, because it
had a bloody great set of bars across it.

In the bedroom the head board had a bed light sort of hanging down above one bed.
Where the light would have been above the other bed were two, presumably live wires,
hanging out. I decided to sleep in the other bed. On a table was an ancient radio. I
plugged it into a two pin wall socket, no switch just a socket, and got some static. I
decided to try and tune it in to something. Put my hand around it to pick it up. My fingers
touched two sets of live wires on the back of the set. Fortunately it incinerated something
on the radio before I got a shock. They had cut the cable coming out of the back of the
set, then joined it to an extension by simply baring the wires and the twisting them
together onto the extension lead. Obviously you don’t worry about insulation in Africa.
Thought I would try and have a shower. Needed a leak first, aimed into the bowl, what a
mess in the bowl, then went to flush it. The cistern had fallen off the wall, so they had
replaced that with an old brass tap. Ever try flushing a dunny with a tap? Not a snowballs
chance in hell!

Went to wash my hands, turned on the hot water tap, a gurgling sound came out, but no
water. Tried the cold water tap, a dribble came out. Turned on the shower, same result.
Decided to write up the diary and go to bed. It was about two AM when I went to get into
bed. This turned out to be a camp stretcher that was shorter than me, so my feet hung
over the end. Got in and fell asleep.

About five AM woken up by what sounded like a Howler monkey either outside the
window, or in the room above. No idea what it was, but it kept it up for about one and
half hours.

Got up and met Ray who was in the room next door. Before I could tell him I wasn’t
staying here, he got in first. He had pretty much the same experience, except when he
turned on the hot water tap in the bathroom, the sink fell off the wall.

We moved to the Savanna International Hotel. Its about equivalent to a three star hotel in
Australia. Its about 150 metres from the Lab. This was Tuesday morning, but it still took
until Thursday to get my dunny and shower working. In the meantime I had to flush the
dunny with a red plastic watering can, and shower under a tap (a tap, no shower head)
that was about 3 feet above the floor and 6 inches out from the wall. At least we had
clean hot and cold water, and the rooms are nice and bright with very good beds and
furniture. We even have a phone and TV in the rooms, but apart from CNN news you can
only get some local TV, which seems to consist of Arab soap operas and cooking shows,
all in some strange language. A lot of Europeans stay here, but so far I have not come
across any Australians.

Next door is a junk yard with two dogs in it. These pair of buggers bark in the early hours
of the morning. It’s a good job I am only here for a month.
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I have been out till about 11:00 PM each night so far and I have not had the time to get
down to sending much email. Now that Ray has gone, I will have more time in the
evening.

Enough for this email, I will send more tomorrow.

Love to Lyn, I miss you.
Dennis